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Fast Tracks: World Champs—Ben Ogden Reflects on His Day, Politics, New Race Suits and Hockey
Stuart HardenFebruary 27, 2025
This reporting costs money. Please support this coverage with a voluntary subscription (below) so FasterSkier can provide this level of access to the sport we all love year-round.
Fast Tracks: World Champs—Jessie Diggins Talks About Moving Forward After a Tough First Race
Nathaniel HerzFebruary 27, 2025
This reporting costs money. Please support this coverage with a voluntary subscription (below) so FasterSkier can provide this level of access to the sport we all love year-round.
Homecoming
John TeafordFebruary 4, 2024
At the edge of the parking lot at the Wild Wings Ski Touring Center stands a strategically placed, much used, and much loved snow pile. Getting up speed by dropping down the short slope in front of the main building, young skiers catch air off the top of the pile, daring each other to ever-bigger, ever-trickier leaps. They’ve been doing it for years. Ben Ogden, Sophie Caldwell, Simi Hamilton, Katharine Ogden, Bill Koch, Fin Bailey....
An Evening with SMS T2: Questions and Answers
FasterSkierOctober 11, 2023
This is Part II of an article reporting on the recent appearance of the SMS T2 team at an evening where FasterSkier partnered with The Memory Clinic of Bennington, Vermont. The video posted below features the entirety of a wide-ranging Question & Answer session that involved most of the SMS T2 team, including Julia Kern, Jessie Diggins, and Ben Ogden. It was a treat to be among so many of our skiing heroes, and to...
An Evening with SMS T2: Strengthen Your Mental and Physical Self with Julia Kern
FasterSkierOctober 10, 2023
The world of professional skiing is big and broad, but each professional team has a community they call “home.” For SMS T2, they are definitely the Home Team in the Nordic community of southern Vermont and western Massachusetts. It’s always fun and inspiring when the team and the community get to come together (as SMS T2 has always been devoted to doing) for events, for conversations, for competitions, and for cameraraderie. FasterSkier recently teamed up...
Skiers Giving Back: Julia Kern on Physical and Mental Health
FasterSkierSeptember 11, 2023
BENNINGTON, VERMONT – FasterSkier is excited to team up with The Memory Clinic to present an evening with Olympic Athletes Julia Kern, Jessie Diggins, and Ben Ogden to discuss the Integration of Physical and Mental Health. On Monday, September 25, in Bennington, Vermont these SMS T2 team members will be on hand to discuss the importance of goal-setting and maintaining motivation for athletes and non-athletes, alike. The evening’s keynote speaker will be World Championship bronze...
Nordic Nation: Rebounding From Setbacks and Gaining Momentum with Julia Kern
Rachel PerkinsJuly 5, 2022
At 24-years-old, Julia Kern is quickly becoming a seasoned veteran in her 7th year on the U.S. Ski Team. However, her career trajectory has been stepwise, not exponential. After making breakthroughs during the 2019-20 season, including her first World Cup podium in a skate sprint in Planica, Slovenia, she faced injuries and setbacks heading into the following season in 2020-2021, leaving her walking away from that season feeling disappointed in both her World Cup and...
Head Coach Transitions for the SMS T2 Program with Pat O’Brien and Perry Thomas
Rachel PerkinsMay 31, 2022
After eight years at the helm of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 team, head coach Pat O’Brien is in the process of taking a few steps back, passing the reins to Perry Thomas, who has spent the last five years as the assistant coach at the University of Vermont. Perhaps highlighting this transition and the sharing of responsibilities the two are in the process of navigating, FasterSkier connected with Thomas in mid-May while he...
Anyone who has had the pleasure of interacting with Katharine Ogden, also commonly known as KO, can tell you that she is humorous, kind, and thoughtful – both in regard to others as well as in her own self-introspection. She is also a wicked good skier, proving herself both nationally and internationally in competition. Ogden recently shared that she was stepping away from professional skiing, having already experienced a range of career ups and downs...
Canadian Nationals/US SuperTour Finals: Team sprint yields another win for Kern with Sonnesyn for SMS T2, University of Utah’s Jager and Keefe take men’s race
Ben TheyerlMarch 26, 2022
“You need some Gordie Howe elbows out there today” said the commentator on the live feed at one point during Friday’s Team Sprint in Whistler. You know, just in case you needed a reminder that this is Canadian Nationals. Alongside his legacy as one of hockey’s greatest players of all time, leaving his mark on the sport as an indomitable force with both his goal scoring and dynamism on the ice, Howe was known as...
It’s Ogden and Ketterson Again in the Craftsbury SuperTour Freestyle Sprint
Rachel PerkinsFebruary 4, 2022
SuperTour racing continued on Friday in Craftsbury, Vermont, as part of the Henchey Memorial Carnival, which also included Eastern Cup and collegiate racing. The three-day event is presented by the Craftsbury Outdoor Center, NENSA, U.S. Ski & Snowboard, and the University of Vermont (UVM), the EISA carnival host school. Racers were faced with snowy conditions for the opening 1.4-kilometer freestyle sprint as a winter storm made its way across the Northeast. Friday morning’s grooming report...
Ketterson and Ogden Take Classic Sprint Win on New Tracks at Mt Van Hoevenberg
FasterSkierJanuary 30, 2022
By Rachel Bachman Perkins and Ben Theyerl After a brief break, the SuperTour picked up in Lake Placid this weekend, with a fluoro-free Period III kicking off with a 1.5-kilometer classic sprint. The frigid forecast called for overnight lows of -5 Fahrenheit, with a wind chill as low as -23F. Highs during the day were only predicted to climb into the low single digits. Qualifiers were scheduled for 10/10:45 am, with quarterfinals for the open...
Last year, in an effort to create a standardized workout that could be easily replicated and repeated, national team coaches presented the concept of the “U.S. Pace Project.” The concept is straightforward: a shift away from time-based intervals to distance-based, centered around repeated laps of a 5-kilometer course. This familiar distance is key. In a call in July, Matt Whitcomb, U.S. Ski Team Head Coach, and one of the creators of the project explained that:...
In-Depth Race Coverage: Slow Heats with Tight Finishes in the SoHo SuperTour Classic Sprint
FasterSkierJanuary 8, 2022
By Rachel Bachman Perkins and Ben Theyerl Precipitation was no longer a threat for the final day of racing in Soldier Hollow on Friday, a 1.5-kilometer classic sprint offered alongside the 2022 U.S. Cross Country Championships, yet classified as SuperTour only. However, athletes still faced unseasonably warm weather as blazing sun brought temperatures into the low 50’s on course during the midday heats. Howling wind and rippling bibs could be heard as background noise as...
Keys to the Castle and Free Fall Rollerski Races Light Up the Northeast
Rachel PerkinsSeptember 30, 2021
As summer turned to fall, skiers from the Stratton Mountain School T2 team (SMS T2), the Sun Valley Gold Team (SVSEF), and the Bridger Ski Foundation Pro Team (BSF) met in Lake Placid, NY for a collaborative training camp, capped off with two stages of rollerski racing. The weekend featured a freestyle sprint event — The Keys to the Castle — on the rollerski track at Mt Van Hoevenberg, followed by a distance stage dubbed...
Seeking Snow: SMS T2 Finds Glide Time in Oberhof, Germany
Ella HallSeptember 22, 2021
With temperatures dropping steadily each day and the first signs of winter visible on distant mountaintops, the mind of a skier inevitably turns towards thoughts of snow. For the professionals this goes one step further: how and when can they get on snow before the season starts? In the US, pre-season snow time is limited. Once the snow disappears on Mount Bachelor, the Eagle Glacier in Alaska is typically the only domestic pre-season skiing available,...
Cruise Control with Sophie Caldwell
Jason AlbertNovember 26, 2020
Perhaps, by the time you read this, Sophie Caldwell will have already sped her way around the sprint circuit in Ruka, Finland. The World Cup begins on Friday. At once Caldwell possesses a down-to-earth humility and a killer’s instinct to find the gaps and repeatedly progress through World Cup sprint heats. Off the course, she’s more likely to ask about your day than she is to dwell on a World Cup podium. We caught up...
Kelsey Phinney brings to the sport of cross-country skiing a big-world view as she has rolled with challenges and fine-tuned her athletic performances. First things first: Phinney has become a voice for Parkinson’s Disease advocacy and education. She produced this great podcast episode for the Davis Phinney Foundation titled The Neuroscience of Parkinson’s — it’s part of a broader series from Phinney called The Parkinson’s Podcast. Phinney’s father, himself a former professional cyclist who was diagnosed...
“I am not making them great. They are making themselves great.” – Sverre Caldwell Long-time Stratton Mountain School (SMS) coach Sverre Caldwell will step down at the end of this school year. According to an article in the Bennington Banner, during Caldwell’s tenure, SMS sent 15 cross-country skiers to the Winter Olympics. SMS also had at least one Junior National champion and one World Junior team member for 24 consecutive years. Caldwell was U.S. Ski...